Fields of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laryngoscope, especially to a laryngoscope with automatic image adjustment for different conditions.
Descriptions of Related Art
For critically injured or anesthetized patients, medical staff needs to place a flexible plastic tube into the trachea of the patient for providing oxygen and facilitating ventilation while the patient is in emergency situations or is unconscious due to general anesthesia.
The laryngoscope can be inserted into most of the patient's mouth by doctors with certain experience for placement of the tracheal tube. Yet about 20% patients have a short lower jaw, a hard neck or a short neck that may lead to difficulties in seeing the tracheal opening. Thus a camera lens is arranged at the front end of the laryngoscope and is connected to a large screen by wires for monitoring images captured by the laryngoscope. However, the large screen is having poor portability. For beginners, the use of laryngoscope to intubate the trachea and monitor the large screen simultaneously is difficult. Thus a new design of an integrated laryngoscope has been developed. A camera lens is disposed on the front end of a blade of the integrated laryngoscope and a light source is beside the camera lens. A smaller screen is arranged at an upper side of the handle. Thus the integrated laryngoscope is easy to use. The viewing angle of the screen is restricted by field of view of the camera lens. If the viewing angle is too low or too high, images on the screen are unable to be viewed clearly. This causes inconvenience in the use of the laryngoscope.
Moreover, patients in a comatose state caused by drowning, blows or other factors need to be maintained an open airway and ensure adequate ventilation. If the patient is vomiting, or the airway may be obstructed by foreign bodies, the rescuer must open the patient's mouse first and observe the patient's larynx carefully to confirm whether the airway is obstructed. If the airway is blocked, certain measures are applied as soon as possible to remove foreign bodies for preventing airway obstruction and poor ventilation.
Generally the patient's tongue base may fall back or collapse to obstruct the larynx when the rescuer opens the mouth of unconscious patient to observe patient's larynx. This causes difficulties in observation of the airway. Once the rescuer has poor vision, the deeper site of the larynx is difficult to be observed. Moreover, there are certain blind spots while observing the larynx. The rescuer with insufficient expertise and experience is unable to see these places.
Thus a device for laryngeal observation is provided. The device consists of a handle and a blade. The handle is grasped by a user and is mounted with a power supply unit therein. One end of the blade is pressed on a tongue base so as to prevent the tongue base from occluding the larynx. Moreover, the blade is arranged with a light and a camera, both connected to the power supply unit by wires. The light is used for lighting the patient's larynx and the camera is used to capture images of the patient's larynx. By a transmission line, the images captured are transmitted to a display. Thus the users can observe the patient's larynx and this is more convenient for the rescuing work.
Although the above device allows the user to observe the patient's larynx more conveniently, the wires for power supply and the transmission line for sending images not only increase total weight and complexity of the device but also affect portability of the display. The display is unable to be moved conveniently according to the rescuer's requirements. The image shown on the display is also unable to be adjusted automatically during rotation of the display according to the patient's position. This also leads to inconvenience in use.